This invention relates to auditing networks as an aid in designing, updating and managing networks.
In recent years telecommunications networks have evolved into one of the most crucial elements of business and society. During the 1980's and early 1990's major changes in network architectures have taken place. Data networks that were hierarchical in nature have moved to more distributed topologies. Voice, video, and data are now being combined into digital bit streams. The trend is for network services that are faster, cheaper, and open to wide ranges of services and information.
Local Area Networks (LANs) have become entrenched as the foundation for the new paradigm in corporate computing, known as Client-Server. For technical and economic reasons major corporations are moving away from large mainframe computers to higher-performance, lower-priced platforms. Standard desktop devices are now extremely powerful personal computers, connected to each other via LANs; and LANs themselves are interconnected to form what is known as an internetwork--the transport vehicle for wide ranges of applications, and the cornerstone for present and future communication architectures.
The internetwork is a mixture of hardware and software technologies. The hardware includes things such as routers, hubs, LAN adapters, digital and analog circuits, multiplexers, and switches of many varieties as well as desktop workstations and servers. Elements are combined into networks that extend from a single workgroup, floor, or building, to campuswide, metropolitan, and nationwide areas. Internetworking software includes elements such as protocol stacks (such as TCP/IP), device drivers, operating systems, and applications. When an internetwork infrastructure is assembled correctly it can create a computing environment which--while dauntingly complex--is nevertheless extremely powerful, and can be considered among a corporation's most valuable assets.
Mission-critical applications depend on this complex internetwork--from off-the-shelf solutions like electronic mail and file sharing, to complex database inquiry and transaction-processing systems. Such applications will continue to flourish throughout this decade and on beyond 2000. Development continues at a frenetic pace in the areas of client-server and multimedia applications. In addition, the "Information Highway" is beginning to take shape, and commercial internetworking will soon be available to everyone from multinational enterprises to smaller service-oriented businesses.
Distributed networks are composed of such a large number of elements that are both network-specific (routers, hubs, switches, facilities, etc.) and non-network-specific (servers, workstations, operating systems, application software, etc.) that just keeping track of where they are is a tough task, let alone how they interact as a system. In addition, each element has its own behavioral characteristics and likely comes from a different vendor. As systems made up of these elements experience change or encounter problems--congestion, circuit failure, or component degradation--overall effects can range from a minor slowdown to complete collapse.
While businesses are becoming increasingly dependent on internetworking, little attention has been paid to the process of correctly designing and implementing these networks. On one hand businesses pay dearly for high-priced hardware resellers and systems integrators to recommend vendor solutions--and on the other hand businesses that recognize the critical nature of these networks pay an even higher price for after-the-fact "network management" solutions from hardware system vendors. Despite the high price tag, however, most data engineering shops validate their network design by building the network, throwing real live users' traffic at it, and analyzing how well it runs.
An important aspect of designing and maintaining networks is being able to quickly assess the current network configuration down to the device configuration level. Such information is helpful in troubleshooting network problems and in updating a network system. Network documentation is typically created manually at great effort